It was only when she started spending time at Fyfield Road that she’d understood how alone she’d really been. Letting herself into the house in Vicarage Road one weekend when her father was in Mexico City, she’d had the idea that their front door was a portal and every time she went through it, she disappeared. If no one saw her or spoke to her or even heard her moving around, maybe she ceased to exist.
The front door at Fyfield Road was a portal, too, but behind it, life had been more real, and loud: the phone rang every five minutes, Seb ground coffee beans, Bizarre Love Triangle played on repeat in Adam’s room, the postman needed signatures for boxes of books. Unless Jacqueline was writing, Radio 4 babbled constantly in the kitchen. The doorbell rang with deliveries of pizza in the evening or curry from Saffron in Summertown and there was the noisy unpacking of cartons, the clatter of plates, rattling ice. Unless Rowan put the TV on, the silence at Vicarage Road was absolute.
Within weeks of meeting Jacqueline and starting an intensive self-prescribed course of feminist reading, Rowan became aware of how hackneyed her scenes were and how 1950s: Betty Friedan might never have written a word. Jacqueline had no interest at all in things domestic – when they moved in, it was Seb who hired someone to organise curtains, Marianne told her. But the picture in the wooden frame, the tightness with which Jacqueline held Marianne, the look on her face as she smelled her baby head, captured for Rowan the essence of her imagined scenes, the feeling she needed when she conjured them up: warmth and love. Protection. And while she’d been Marianne’s friend, part of the family, almost, at Fyfield Road, that protection, that warmth, had surrounded her, too, like a circle of light.
How much had the papers paid for the photographs? Many thousands, surely, if they’d put them on the front page. She could never have bought them, she didn’t have that sort of money – any money, actually – but if she had, she would have spent every penny of it to spare the Glasses pain, offer them some protection in return.
Picking up the card, she ran her fingertip over the letters that Marianne had written, as if by doing so she would hear her voice.
I need to talk to you.
I’m sorry, Mazz, she said silently, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.
The last time Rowan had seen her, that afternoon on the pavement in Fyfield Road, she’d made a promise. ‘If you ever need to talk,’ she’d said, ‘if you ever need me, I’m here.’
Marianne had stared at her, that look on her face, and then she’d grabbed Turk’s hand and pulled him after her. ‘Come on, Pete. Let’s go.’
‘Mazz, hold on,’ he’d said. ‘Just wait a moment. At least listen to what she . . .’
‘No.’ The loudness of Marianne’s voice had startled them both. ‘I said no.’
They’d fallen silent as the Dawsons’ front door came open. The air between them shimmering with Marianne’s hostility, they’d waited until a car door slammed and Angela Dawson’s throaty diesel Volvo started up.
‘Are you coming or not, Peter?’ Mazz said quietly. ‘Your choice.’ He’d looked between them, bewildered, and then, shooting Rowan a look of mute apology, he’d followed Marianne through the gate.
But she had listened. She’d heard. Ten years later, she’d known that she could send those six words and Rowan would know exactly who they were from.
With every hour that passed yesterday, she’d become more and more certain that Marianne’s death was connected to what she’d done. Many people had loved her – Jacqueline and Adam; James Greenwood; Turk; new friends, no doubt, among the throngs at the crematorium and the house – and yet finally, after all these years, Rowan was the one to whom Mazz had reached out. It was her help she’d needed because she, Rowan, was the only person who knew. Or had been.
She’d kept Marianne’s secret for ten years, a decade in which they hadn’t spoken a word to one another. She’d proved she was trustworthy: there could have been no doubt in Mazz’s mind that she could rely on her.
That it had been too late, that the card hadn’t reached her in time, was too painful to think about. When it came to it, though by no fault of her own, Rowan had broken her promise. She hadn’t been there.
Could she have prevented her death, if she had got the message in time? She’d never know. Marianne was gone, and Rowan would have to live with the question for the rest of her life.
There was only one thing that she could do for her now: she could keep Marianne’s secret – go on keeping it. She could make sure that what Marianne did stayed buried. That Jacqueline and Adam never found out.